Elementary recommendations from Jackie Chitwood and Patty Thiets, librarians in St. Paul Public Schoolswww.diversebooks.org

Favorite titles from teachers

Middle and high school books
“I am Malala” by Malala Yousafzai (YA and adult versions)
“City of Djinns” by William Dalrymple
“Beyond the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo
“In the Country of Men” by Hisham Matar
“American Smooth” by Rita Dove
“The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver
“The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Kindred” by Octavia Butler
“Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” by August Wilson
“Americanah,” “Half A Yellow Sun” and “Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“The Latehomecomer” by Kao Kalia Yang
“The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka
“A Different Pond” by Bao Phi
“American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
“The Arrival” by Shaun Tan
“Native Son” by Richard Wright
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
“In the Language of Miracles” by Rajia Hassib
“The Undergrown Railroad” by Colson Whitehead
“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
“Paradise of the Blind” by Dương Thu Hương
“A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah
“The Farming of Bones” by Edwidge Danticat
“Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel
“A Place Where the Sea Remembers” by Sandra Benitez
“Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” by Trevor Noah
“Everything I Never Told You” by Celeste Ng
“LaRose” by Louise Erdrich

Nonfiction with great historical background
“The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson
“The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander
“Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly
“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anna Fadiman
“The Beautiful Struggle,” “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond” by Marc Lamont Hill